


cultural misalignment

by Zekkass



Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers Generation One
Genre: Character Study, Christmas, Gen, Injury, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-17
Updated: 2018-01-17
Packaged: 2019-03-06 03:38:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13402653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zekkass/pseuds/Zekkass
Summary: "What is this Kriss-mas about?"orWheeljack has an injury in his lab on Christmas Eve, and Ratchet's come to the rescue.





	cultural misalignment

**Author's Note:**

> For the 2017 TFormers Secret Santa. Merry Christmas!
> 
> "I want Wheeljack and Ratchet from G1. Ratchet fixing Jack at the night of Christmas Eve. I think of them as couple there too"
> 
> It's not quite fluff, it's not quite shippy, but I had fun writing it and I hope you enjoy it. :>

It's not the worst injury Wheeljack's suffered for his genius, but as he's immobilized behind a workbench with energon ebbing out of his system, he's forced to conclude that it's up there. Plexiglass shards lie around him, one propped against one of his optics. Error messages flash around it, and Wheeljack vents gently, sending some of the fragments sliding off.

Okay: he's called Ratchet. It wasn't an explosion so much as it was a miscalculation of how much pressure that particular container could handle. It was his mistake that he was angled with non-shielded components out on display, so they could get shredded by his impromptu flurry gun.

Insult to injury: he wouldn't even be paralyzed if he hadn't reactively jumped out of the way into the other piece of the experiment, a set of electro-blades that neatly severed a critical band of cables in his neck.

"Wheeljack?" Ratchet calls after the door opens.

"Here," Wheeljack says. "It's safe."

"The humans have a point about safety regulations in a lab," Ratchet says, louder as he gets closer. "How bad is the dama - "

"Looks worse than it is," Wheeljack says weakly, looking up at Ratchet. Here comes the real explosion: Ratchet _hates_ patching up lab damage, and this _is_ pretty bad.

Ratchet's moving before he recovers enough to speak, deploying a scanner from his forearm as he traces the flow of energon. Wheeljack knows the triage procedure: halt major energon leaks while scanning for more serious damage, keep the patient online long enough to get their own system scans, proceed from there. Unfortunately, he knows from long experience that this kind of damage won't grant him the sweet release of a forced shut-down - he gets to watch and feel all of the repairs _and_ Ratchet's commentary as he works.

Which isn't always a problem! It's just...

"Can you retract your mask?" Ratchet asks as he sets aside another plate of armor. Wheeljack's legs are open to their circuitry and tubing, and Ratchet deftly applies patches to the punctured tubing around his joints, carefully lifting and turning the limbs to get to work on the shredded sections.

"Think so," Wheeljack says, and after a moment of rerouting the command - his motor control systems are a mess thanks to those severed cables, seeing as he offloads most of the work to systems stored below the neck and it's not prepared to handle that kind of load - his mask retracts.

Never, ever argue with a medic, even if it makes you uncomfortable.

Ratchet's seen the outline around his intakes before, and just gets on with his work: a cable extends from behind a panel on his side and extends into Wheeljack's intakes, pumping their best approximation of medical-grade into his systems.

If Ratchet's working on his legs, then that's where the main leaks are. If Ratchet hasn't decided to address the damage in his neck, then it's not crucial to his continued function. And because the worst damage is shredded cables...

"How did you pull this off?" Ratchet asks. No insults, no threats, he's not really worried.

Wheeljack vents again, still gentle.

"The pressure limits on that plexiglass isn't all it's cracked up to be," he says. "And the electro-blades are working perfectly."

"We're supposed to use those on the Decepticons," Ratchet says, reaching up to ding a fingertip against one of his fins. "I'll remove them and reconnect the links as soon as these are sealed. Thanks, by the way."

"What? What for?"

"The movie marathon," Ratchet says.

"The what?" Wheeljack knows what a movie is, and what a marathon is. But why hold one now? "Is there some kind of special occasion?"

"Is your chronometer busted?"

"Nah, it's fine," Wheeljack says. "What'd I miss?"

"A human holiday called Kriss-mas," Ratchet says, syllables awkward. The human's languages are imperfect fits with their vocalizers no matter how many times Jazz tweaks them. "It's tomorrow, and according to Spike, the tradition for Kriss-mas Eve is to watch seasonal movies."

Wheeljack can picture the scene: most of the Autobots hanging out in the commons, watching the movies and sharing energon as they try to puzzle out the enigma that is human entertainment. It's a puzzle he's happily left to everyone else, given how vital his experiments are to tipping the balance of power.

"How bad are they?" Wheeljack asks.

"No worse than the human's usual fare," Ratchet says with a sigh. It's not to his taste, these human dramas, and whatever goodwill Ratchet held towards them was banished when he watched their so-called medical dramas. "Some of them are touching."

"Huh. You're welcome," Wheeljack says, watching as Ratchet begins to close his legs. He resists the urge to ask him to hurry up, instead studying Ratchet's face. "What is this Kriss-mas about?"

Something's eating at Ratchet, and it isn't his injuries.

"It's got two primary components," Ratchet says as he begins to touch Wheeljack's neck. "The first is the legend associated with it: the creation of a newspark without their standard creation methods."

"Like Grimlock!" Wheeljack bursts out, and Ratchet pauses, expression twisting into amusement.

"Not quite - apparently the humans need two partners for their normal methods. In _this_ case the newspark only had one and a kind of analogue to Vector Sigma."

"So why make a human that way? Were they at war?"

"The motivation was to reform their society," Ratchet says. "So, technically..."

"Hey," Wheeljack says as Ratchet's fingers slow. "What about it's eating you?"

He can feel Ratchet's fingers in proximity to his neck cabling, and with the cables realigned his self-repair systems reconnect and seal the connections. He can see the troubled look in Ratchet's face, and he could guess at what aspect of this is bothering him, but not with his processors busy untangling the backed up mess in his motor control systems.

"Making a spark for war is one thing," Ratchet says, because they'd both been through this: Grimlock and the Dinobots were a necessity, meant to fill out the tactical gaps in their forces. They were also an experiment, a chance to prove to everyone that they could make more Cybertronians without being on Cybertron.

Hope, in the form of armored beasts who turned out to be clumsy sparklings with wills all of their own. The only regret Wheeljack has for them is that the Dinobots don't like Optimus Prime.

Ratchet continues: "But to make one so it will _start_ a war?"

"It's not unprecedented," Wheeljack starts, then stops. "What, you think they wanted to make a Megatron?"

"...It's the opposite," Ratchet says. "The sparkling was meant to create a peaceful society."

"Oh," Wheeljack says. Oh, that's bigger. And Ratchet's just about done putting him back together, so he can really think about it. "Forget the humans for a second. Y'think it would've turned out the same for us if Megatron had been created with Autobot principles installed in him? There's too much difference between them and us and you know it."

It's what led to the war, anyways.

"That's just it, Wheeljack," Ratchet says, optics flaring a little as he finishes fixing him. "It's not perfect, but the human's sparkling succeeded, to some extent. The lessons are still taught and practiced, and they haven't decimated each other over their differences!"

Wheeljack sits up, plexiglass falling away from his optic as he takes Ratchet's hands.

"They're aliens," he says. "Remember that. They think differently than we do. They've got us beat for diversity and they don't have spaceflight yet, so they've got to get along. We can't judge ourselves by their successes. Or failures!"

It's not what Ratchet wants, but it seems to work, gets his optics to ease back on that flare.

"It sounds like you're letting this stuff get to you. So what if Megatron had been created Autobot instead of Decepticon? That didn't happen. And if it did, we'd all have spark-attacks if ol' bucket head showed up trying to tell us to hug and sing songs."

Ratchet actually laughs, and Wheeljack joins in, hauling them both to their pedes as they laugh.

"Hey," Wheeljack says. "What's the second meaning of their holiday?"

"Gift-giving," Ratchet says. "The tradition is to gather in your home and exchange gifts with your family."

"Then we've got just enough time to get started," Wheeljack says firmly. "Forget the war, let's put some gifts together."

"After we clean up your mess," Ratchet says, and Wheeljack's fins flash in happiness.

"That's the spirit!"


End file.
